Mohammad Naseer at 29 is an Afghan veteran commander who began his career as a foot soldier with Ahmed Shah Masood’s Northern Alliance. At 18, he shook hands with Masood at an inspection line-up in the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul.

A commander in the Afghan National Defence Security Forces, Naseer who completed a four-year training course, is stationed at the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul, attacked last summer by eight suicide bombers.

“One of my men shot one of the militants right here in the lobby,” he explains. He believes Afghanistan will be a better place when the foreign forces are gone, with the Afghan National Army (ANA) capable of defending the country.

Afghan military commanders might show confidence about troop readiness in the post-war transition phase and after, but research by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), a policy research organisation reveals the peripheral areas of Afghanistan, such as Nuristan province, risk falling to the Taliban after the Isaf withdrawal is complete.

In the next few months, US troops will ‘relinquish responsibility’ over the western half of Nuristan while keeping their options open as to possible future intervention in the eastern border districts, explains the AAN.

The only Isaf presence in Nuristan is in Nurgram district, on the border with Laghman. Here the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) has not increased their presence. Promises of reinforcements have not materialized and salaries of the police quick reaction force – the only legitimate security forces in the province –were withheld for five months in late 2011 because of corrupt local government authorities.

It can be argued that taking up responsibility in such areas can be a tough test for the ANSF: these districts are insurgent strongholds partly because of their location, but also because they are seen by the Taliban as strategic for operations. It would be a success story for the Taliban if they were able to overthrow the inadequate government in several district centres or – even briefly – the provincial capital itself, say observers.

Though many soldiers with the ANA admit that “foreign countries have trained and equipped them”, there is consensus that the “intervention should end and western troops should leave Afghanistan because they are infidels working for their own geo-political benefit”.

The occupation has not brought peace, say ANA soldiers and when asked if they will secure outlying provinces they explain “that the ANA will be better able to secure their country against all outside enemies”.

The ANA is said to represent a multi-ethnic force, especially in Kabul and Kunduz — such as the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras — although there have been reports showing rifts between the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic community and Tajiks and Hazaras from the north. The rupturing of ethnic fault-lines could result in a repeat of the civil war of the 1990s, if this situation is not contained, security experts explain, pointing to the lack of ethnic balance in the ANA and National Police.

Guidelines issued in 2003 by General Karl Eikenberry, a former chief of the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan focused on ethnic balance in the ANA explaining that the composition should be balanced: 38 per cent to be Pashtuns, 25 per cent Tajiks, 19 per cent Hazaras and eight per cent Uzbeks. A report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in October 2011 showed that Tajiks, representing 25 per cent of the population, now account for 41 per cent of all ANA troops who have been trained, and that only 30 per cent of the ANA trainees are now Pashtuns. Reasons for the predominance of Tajik troops include the fact that the ANA was finding it difficult to recruit troops in Kandahar and Helmand provinces by mid-2007. Tajiks are known to occupy key positions in the Ministry of Defence as well, say Kabul-based observers.

In 1992, the previous civil war between Pashtuns and Tajiks happened when the army of the Soviet-supported Najibullah regime had disappeared, having kept peace between the two ethnic groups.

Tajik commanders don’t trust Pashtuns in the south and the east because they cite Taliban influence among the police forces, says a professor of social sciences at Kabul University. For security expert, General (retired) Abdul Wahid Taqat, a former Afghan intelligence official, the challenge is cleansing the army of anti-western, religious sentiment. Even with attempts at establishing a traditionally patriotic culture within the ANF, he says that soldiers and officers with affiliations to the Taliban, anti-Soviet mujahideen and tribal warlords, might undermine the effort.

It has been two years since the government formed a special military intelligence cell to identify such elements within the security forces, especially active, following the killing of Nato troops by Afghan soldiers, he adds. Intelligence cells have a presence within the interior ministry as well as the defence ministry for this purpose, he says.

Habib Khan Totakhil, a Kabul-based journalist and activist with the Awakened Youth Movement says: “There is no justification for this war.

Most people supported the Taliban in certain southern and eastern provinces because of US intervention. So when foreign forces withdraw there will be no need for this war,” Totakhil believes Pakistan creating safe havens and exporting terror to Afghanistan has caused further insecurity.

General Taqat questions why the army is trained by Nato-led forces and not by Afghan veteran generals. He explains that Afghan forces are forced to shoot and kill their own people for the benefit of the US which has left no trust and little morale among the men. “The Americans give them minimum weapons. There is provision for an air force, no tanks and no rocket launchers. If they give our forces planes, then they will bomb Nato bases. We possessed 350 tanks before the Cold War and 700 jets as part of our army. Even our air is not our own now.”

In 2014, it is expected that the Nato-led ISAF forces will no longer remain in a combat role handing over security responsibilities to the ANSF.

According to General Zahir Azimi, the spokesperson of the Afghan Ministry of Defence, the ANA is prepared to take over security responsibilities in 2013. “Considering their capabilities, there will be no security gap as the French troops leave. The Afghan forces are capable of filling the vacuum as French troops will start withdrawing from Kapisa province next month,” he explained.

Around 3,500 French soldiers are deployed in Kapisa and Kabul, comprising the fifth largest contingent in the Nato force, with the French pullout expected to end at the end of 2012.

With reaffirmed financial commitment supporting the Afghan army and police, Azimi confirmed that “the international community will provide $4.1 billion (204.5 billion Afghanis) annually to support the forces and the Afghan government would also allocate $500 million a year.”

Establishing security, creating a competent government in Kabul devoid of corruption and ensuring that regional neighbours fail to destabilise the country might be the priority of Afghan politicians working for future peace, but with a history of long-running civil wars and state collapse more than once, many explain that the current government’s capacity to secure the country is inadequate.

Politicians, including parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai, the former chairwoman of the defence committee, believe that the international community should rebuild Afghanistan because this is payback time: “We are part of the international community and part of the anti-extremism movement. If there’s a joint benefit from this international assistance, then we will welcome it.”

A latest report by the US Department of Defence (DoD) on security and stability in Afghanistan says it will take another four years for the ANSF to fight without international assistance, because the areas transferred to them have been ‘benign’ and ‘less affected’. Security is so precarious that it is not possible to imagine how it will endure outside Kabul. Even if they can control major cities and roads, without international supervision in 2014-15, the odds are that the south and east could once again become Taliban battlegrounds.

Insurgent movement in eastern Afghanistan as reported remains problematic although the DoD report says there has been a decrease in attacks; this is not large enough for the insurgency to be degraded. The army’s most obvious drawbacks include the lack of equipment and short training time, say military sources.

In Kandahar, security responsibilities for most districts have been handed over to Afghan National Army soldiers to a certain extent, explains Abdul Hadi Khapalwak, a tribal elder from the province, adding that local communities do not approve of foreign troops operating in districts, especially when it comes to conducting night raids. Condemning the raids, he says that they violated privacy and disrespected women, because foreign forces do not understand local traditions. Pressure from tribal elders resulted in the signing of “an agreement between the Karzai government and the US in April, bringing operations under the Afghan leadership”, he adds.

A memorable photograph by David Gill taken after the April attacks in Kabul shows a police commando holding a Kalashnikov, wounded with blood stains above his right knee, but walking. This image has not only taken the shape of a poster campaign winning public support in Kabul, and boosting troop morale but has found admiration on several Facebook pages and via Twitter among the youth. As the security forces take on a more frontline role, stories of heroic acts by soldiers (in south Kabul, a guard wrapped himself around a suicide bomber who detonated his vest) gain recognition not only from Nato commanders but the public.

“I was so proud of our forces for their coordination and rapid reaction in April,” says Totakhil who has relatives enlisted in the forces.

According to the Afghan defence ministry, the forces will number more than 350,000 by 2015.

Nearing 2014-15, America and Britain will not withdraw from Afghanistan as announced because of regional geo-political and strategic interests, General Taqat believes.

Questions raised include whether the preparedness of the Afghan forces is adequate, despite the supreme Nato commander in Afghanistan ‘front-loading’ the risk, by handing over areas in advance where the fighting is the toughest so that local forces have longer direct combat support; whether long-term international commitment to economic development will continue and whether any attempts at reconciliation will include all Afghan stakeholders prepared to work together.

(Additional reporting by Zia Rehman)